The embryos survived for up to three days in research carried out by scientists at Newcastle University. Parliament will soon vote on the future of such research in the UK. In the meantime, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, which grants licenses for embryo research, has agreed in principle to the creation of human-animal hybrids.
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Comments
Why do we need to create this strange hybrid is it an end in itself to be experimented on when it is created or is it to obtain stem cells which can be harvested from the placenta and umbilical cords of normal births without this macabre experimentation.
There is something very wrong about this human-animal hybrid experiment.
I think we as a society need to tread carefully when it comes to tinkering with Human and Animal embryos.
Well done Newcastle!!
An ignorant church lobby is trying as usual to prevent scientific and medical progress.
Write to your MP and advise him/her to vote in favour of this bill.
Three Cheers for newcastle University:
“Every great scientific truth goes through three stages. First, people say it conflicts with the Bible. Next they say it had been discovered before. Lastly they say they always believed it."
- Louis Agassiz
"The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetics in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve. And every step in astronomy and geology ever taken has been opposed by bigotry and superstition. The Greeks surpassed us in artistic culture and in architecture five hundred years before Christian religion was born."
   - Mark Twain
“All religions, arts, and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom."
   - Albert Einstein
"We are a scientific civilization. That means a civilization in which knowledge and its integrity are crucial. Science is only a Latin word for knowledge... Knowledge is our destiny."
   - Jacob Bronowski
The religions disperse, kingdoms fall apart, but works of science remain for all ages."
- Ulugh-Beg
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science."
- Charles Darwin
"Cinderella [Science]... lights the fire, sweeps the house, and provides the dinner; and is rewarded by being told that she is a base creature, devoted to low and material interests. But in her garret she has fairy visions out of the ken of the pair of shrews [Theology and Philosophy] who are quarrelling downstairs. She sees the order which pervades the seeming disorder of the world; the great drama of evolution, with its full share of pity and terror, but also with abundant goodness and beauty... ; and she learns... that the foundation of morality is to [be] done, once and for all, with lying; to give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence."
- T.H. Huxley
Brian- The quotes you provide are the ultimate response to this post. Spot on.
This research is excellent news, from an ethical standpoint as well as a scientific one. Our ethical focus should be on people as *people*, not as cells or genes. Embryos have no self awareness; stem cells are not magic. Understanding the basic biology of these systems, and applying them to treating human suffering is a highly laudable goal.
The irony is that in reducing the uniqueness of the human experience and the emergent complexity of the human organism to the mere content of its genome, or to the stage when it is an undifferentiated unconscious cluster of cells, the so-called "ethical" stance of the Catholic Church (as exemplified by some grossly inappropriate and ignorant comments from senior church figures) is itself highly unethical. It degrades human people. It elevates the digital genome to divine status - if anything, it is idolatry. It's time the Catholic Church revised its position regarding ESCR and reproductive rights in general, because it's at odds with both science and basic ethics.
But maybe, as with Galileo, we can expect them to correct their mistakes in 300 years' time. In the meantime, good Catholic people will continue to avail of IVF, contraception, and (in time) treatments based on ESCR, as is their ethical right.
How do you know that an embryo has self awareness or not? Have you asked? Are you able?
How can you know whether good or evil may come from this? Have you asked? Are you able?
Seems to me that much genetic research is done in order to eliminate life before it starts - a kind of pre-emptive strike on human weakness.
So.... what's the criteria for survival in this utopian vision of the future.